After extensive learning, experimentation, and collaboration with various AI experts, I have developed my own Privacy Consent component system. The piece of information that finally pushed this to completion was the addition of property syntax validation in the code editor. This made all the difference. Thank you.
There are two parts to the system: first, the consent popup itself, and second, the Project Settings button. This button allows the user consent flag to be cleared, which in turn will make the popup visible again. The userConsent flag is stored in localStorage.
All the properties of the Project Settings button can also be controlled via properties. See below.
In the screenshots of the popup, I intentionally used a variety of colors to demonstrate what is possible. The SVG can be replaced as needed, and the opacity can be controlled to allow it to blend into the background. It is always placed behind the other elements in the pop-up.
Currently, there is no user control over the placement of the popup, which will be a future enhancement.
Elements is something else, yes, this took a lot of work and trial and error, but just the fact that it could even be done is a testament to the thought that has gone into the software. It bodes well for the future, as there is almost no excuse for becoming stuck if something you need is not available. I didn’t have to pay anybody for this code, and it gave me a chance to dust off my old programming skills. Could a non-programmer have done this? I dare say they could if they knew how to frame the right questions to either an AI or the forum.
It looks very good, but it needs to do more for the EU. Declining means that Google Analytics really won’t load and will only be allowed to load after you’ve responded to the banner.
I still hope that some of the Stacks developers will continue with Elements and deliver good “Stacks” - maybe you? Things are looking pretty bleak at the moment for the well-known Stacks providers.
I have some ideas of how we could handle this in Elements, but it’d definitely be interesting to hear how other are handling the loading of external scripts and/or setting of cookies
At least for the use in Germany, this would not be sufficient. For my understanding it must list all categories/types of cookies and allow users to select their preferences in detail (not just “accept all”).
We are advised by eRecht24. The company is owned by lawyers. They offer a generator for the legal notice (Impressum) and privacy policy (Datenschutz) pages, which ensures that everything is legally compliant. The banner must ask for consent before (for example) Google Analytics is activated. If the user does not agree, Google Analytics must not be loaded. In addition, all services used must be listed individually. Please take a look at the privacy policy text (https://www.cornrow.de/datenschutz/). It is extremely long, but that is necessary.
My banner comes from a German company and is hosted on German servers. This way, I do not have to worry about visitor data being transferred abroad. I also store my Google Analytics code there, which is only executed after consent has been given. You will find this at the bottom of my html-websites. There must also be a link to the banner on every page, so users can change their settings at any time. I was able to configure the banner so that it is not displayed if the access comes from a country where these rules do not apply. For all these matters, it is necessary to sign a data processing agreement with each service provider. Most companies offer such agreements on their websites.
All of this sounds very complex, but thanks to eRecht24, it is actually quite manageable - although not free of charge.
It would be great if Elements offered this themselves, but it is not strictly necessary. There are several professional providers that are affordable.
I am happy to help and provide access and information where I can. I am very interested in supporting Elements. Please feel free to ask me.
Yes, I think Elements to offer this - and mostly keep it up to date based on legal requirements in different countries - is not sustainable. It is better to integrate the ones available from e. g. erecht24 or legalcockpit which I use.
There might be many others. This was just an example about the complexity of the issues. For my own websites, I only use technical necessary cookies and never have used a cookie banner. I hate those things…
I currently don’t handle any of this complex stuff because all of the sites I’m working on don’t use any cookies. Notice that it is a Privacy Consent pop-up. All I’m trying to do is get people to consider looking at our privacy policy so they know where they stand.
At some point in the future, I might take this further, but I’m banking on Elements to provide a solution that is likely to be much more elegant than mine.
I used to use an excellent Stacks solution from Will Woodgate, he hd planned on porting it to Elements, but when RW abandoned support for porting Stacks to Elements, he gave up on the project. Maybe at somepoint he will reconsider as it was an excellent solution.
I try not to do anything Google on my sites, so my needs are probably different than most.
I used to pay Iubenda $10 a month, but realized I was just wasting my money as their solution was aimed at sites that did a lot more tracking than I do.
So I rolled my own while awaiting a solution from RW.
